


Tie Goes To The Runner

by leiascully



Series: Five Ways You Didn't Sleep With Gregory House [2]
Category: House M.D.
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-19
Updated: 2006-09-19
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:35:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You make him go clothes shopping, celebration about the leg, and because he's worn jeans almost exclusively for the last ten years and his dress pants come ridiculously far up his body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tie Goes To The Runner

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: between S2 and S3  
> A/N: [**julietcetera**](http://julietcetera.livejournal.com/) corrected me with a firm hand. [**angiescully**](http://angiescully.livejournal.com/) cheered.   
> Disclaimer: _House M.D._ and all related characters are property of Heel and Toe Films, Shore Z Productions and Bad Hat Harry Productions in association with NBC Universal Television Studio. I make no money from writing this and no infringement is intended.

You make him go clothes shopping, celebration about the leg, and because he's worn jeans almost exclusively for the last ten years and his dress pants come ridiculously far up his body. He's gotten tan, too, all that running in the sun, and between the pants and the open throats of his dress shirts, he looks like a senior citizen about to head to the early bird special. You cast a sideways glance at him as he fidgets in the passenger seat of your car, drumming his fingers along the door, and think that he is still too handsome to deserve the clothes he's been wearing, though the fabrics were nice.

"Too bad you didn't bring the girls," he said when he got in, glancing at the conservative neck of your polo shirt, and you glared at him. You're wearing jeans and flipflops aside from the shirt and your hair is in a messy ponytail, because you'll be damned if you're going to dress up for Gregory House. Your underwear is nice and fairly lacy, but that's for you to know and him to dream about. It helps to have one up on him, even if it's only in your mind. But he looks good, and you know you look good, and despite yourself you feel a frisson of wanting him. But you tell yourself it's the car rattling over a patch of bad road.

You take him to a nice store. He can afford it, though he complains, and you remind him how the hospital had to pay for his ketamine and his PT and he snarks back something about how maybe some of that money should have gone to security. You ignore his comment and size him up with your eyes.

"What's your inseam?"

"87."

"God, you're a singularly unhelpful individual."

"You could always wrestle me down and check my tags," he says with a gleam in his eye. "Of course, now I can outrun you."

"I can't tell you how I long for the days when you were crippled," you mutter, flipping through a rack of pants, testing the quality of fabrics between your fingertips.

"Missed your chance with this last coma," he says. "Could have really done some damage this time. Taken the leg off."

"Keep talking and I'll put you back in a coma and make sure they take something else," you tell him meaningfully. "The short leg."

"Better give the surgeons more detail than that or they'll take the wrong one." He waggles his eyebrows at you.

You sigh and hold a pair of pants against his waist. "What do you think of these?"

He shrugs. You glare at him and sling the pants over your arm, gathering more as you move through the store. He follows you like some mangy dog, with his three day growth of stubble and that vagabond look in his eyes.

"I forget how short you are, Cuddles."

"I forget what an ass you are," you say as he steps on the back of your flipflops. "Go try these on." You shove the armful of pants toward him. "I'm going to get some shirts that won't make you look like you're about to trundle off in a golf cart."

"What?"

"Go," you tell him, and surprisingly enough, he does. You go look at shirts and run your hands over them, enjoying the feel of the fine cotton. You love him in blue, but he needs to branch out. You pick out a pale sort of almost purple as a transition color, something that's a less gaudy pink than that other one he owns (wherever he got it), and a light green that you think will look good against his new tan. A white shirt, just because you can't resist a man in a nice white shirt. A deep brown as an experiment. Then you look for ties and pick out a few that will go with his old shirts and a couple that might go with the new ones.

You can tell which stall he's in in the dressing room: he's whistling some moody blues in a twistedly cheerful way. You tap on the door.

"The woman's mad for it!" he shouts. "Can't get enough of vaguely public sex!" He's grinning widely when he opens the door a crack and peeks through. "Yeeeeeeeesssss?" he drawls.

"Shirts and ties," you snap, thrusting them towards him, and he grabs your wrist and pulls you into the little room.

"Just come in, for Christ's sake," he says irritably. "As if I'm supposed to know what looks good. Isn't that why you insisted on coming along in the first place?" You cross your arms and lean against the wall, turning your face away. It's a standard issue high-end dressing room: full-length mirror, plenty of hooks, little bench for the weary shopper. The door is tall and goes almost all the way to the floor, which you appreciate now that you're in a compromised situation. You're glad the store is quiet this morning and there's no one else in the dressing rooms to hear you arguing in close quarters with House. "Come on, Cuddy, it isn't as if you haven't seen me naked before. I know you were peeking during my surgery. All that vaunted concern for my health - you really just like having me at your complete mercy."

You roll your eyes. "You're not even naked now." His jeans are unbuttoned and unzipped, but that's the limit of his undress.

"I could be," he says, full of mischief like a schoolboy. You glare him down and he pouts and shucks his jeans down his thighs, stepping out of them and into a pair of charcoal dress pants as you take a brief involuntary moment to examine the state of his thigh. The muscle around the scar looks firm and healthy under the skin, but he will never have that beautiful round quadricep again, just the puckered scar.

"Stop it." He isn't even looking at you. "I can feel the guilt wafting my way. You healed me. Be happy." He pulls the pants up too high and buttons them. "What do you think, Doc? Am I beautiful yet?"

You chuff in your throat and push them down his hips a bit, tugging and straightening and running your finger under the waistband to make sure everything's kosher while he makes eyes at you and pretends to be ticklish. "There. Now you're beautiful." You start to step back to admire him, but he puts a hand under your chin and tips your face up.

"So are you," he says, unexpectedly. "I like it when you wear your hair up, Lise."

You jerk your chin out of his hand and turn to fuss with the shirts and ties so he can't see you blush. You hate how he's always known how to push your buttons and when to turn on the charm, and you're furious with yourself for wanting him to take his clothes off.

"So these get the thumbs up?" he says behind you and you know he's smirking. You don't even glance at the mirror in the room because you could probably recreate that smirk from memory if someone handed you a chunk of clay.

"The thumb up your ass," you mutter under your breath, just trying to come up with something. "Here. Try this." You hand him the white shirt without turning, feeling vulnerable bent over the little bench, but it's not as if he wouldn't stare at your ass if you were standing straight. "And don't put it on over the t-shirt," you remind him as you hear the rustle of his arm in the sleeve.

He sighs exaggeratedly and you're sure he's dropping the shirt on the floor behind you as you determinedly try to match too few ties to too few shirts while taking a long time about it. Another rustling noise and his t-shirt falls over your head, warm against your face and scented with deodorant and skin. You take a deep breath involuntarily, almost dizzy, and shake the shirt off your head. It's inside out, but you fold it anyway before you put it on the bench.

"Well?"

You're sure he hasn't had enough time to get all the buttons done up. "Tuck it in. I'm picking a tie. And don't leave more than one button undone at the neck." He makes a noise like an exasperated child put in time out and crumples something.

"Turn around," he says. You don't, but you hold out the tie to him over your shoulder. He grabs your wrist instead of the tie. You turn, ready to snap at him, and he reaches for your other hand. "You're acting like a blushing schoolgirl, Cuddy, surely you've seen a man dressed before." His fingers close over yours and before you can piece together a comeback he has the strip of maroon silk looped and knotted around your wrists.

"House!"

"Don't worry," he says. "If I wrinkle it, I'll buy it." You spin around, furious, but he still has hold of your wrists. Briefly you try to wrestle away, but his hands are big and he has no problem not letting go, even with a one-handed grip as he raises the other to smother a fake yawn. He looks good in the clothes you've picked out but that only makes you angrier.

"Greg, I swear to God, if you don't let me go," you hiss, although the size of his hands and the warm pressure of his fingers are oddly arousing. You try to remember the last time he touched you and can't, and at the moment you can't remember the last time anyone else touched you, either.

"You'll what?" he asks, amused, and moves closer, pressing you back until your calves are against the little bench. "You going to fire me, Lise? Tell the board I talked you into kinky sex games? You don't want to break Wilson's heart, do you?"

"This is not a kinky sex game! This is you being a five year old!"

"Oh, ye of little faith," he says, and lifts your arms over your head, and kisses you. You are too startled to push him away, not to mention that your flipflops are a little flimsy for the kind of kicking you'd like to be doing. And then you don't want to push him away at all, because the man turns out to be an extraordinarily talented kisser, and despite the scrape of stubble against the tender skin of your mouth or maybe because of it, you find you are making small noises and trying to pull him closer with the sheer magnetic force of your hipbones, and also you hadn't noticed that he's lifted the tie over one of the clotheshooks and you are well and truly caught.

As if you didn't know it twenty years ago when he gave you that devilish smile the first time.

When he steps back you whimper and you're still mad at him for being able to do this to you, all of this, the desire that's made your knees so weak you're not sure you'd be standing if your hands weren't tied to the wall over your head, and the tying of your wrists to the wall in the first place.

"So what's the verdict now?" he asks. "Kinky sex game yet? I'm pretty sure Chase is the only one who goes around kissing five year olds."

"Kiss me again and I'll tell you if you deserve that kind of upgrade," you challenge him, and he chuckles.

"Getting feisty there," he says. "I like it." He steps closer and you bite your lip in anticipation, trying to swallow another whimper. "Keep making all that noise and someone will come knocking," he whispers, his mouth almost against yours. "Or is that what you want, Cuddy?" His hand slips around behind you and his fingers graze the bare skin between the hem of your t-shirt and the band of your jeans. "Do you want someone to come asking what's happening so that they find me touching you?" He tugs at the hem of your t-shirt and what you want to say is that you don't care as long as he's kissing you, but you can't get the words out. He watches your face and grins and kisses you anyway, slowly working your shirt up and up until you feel cool air on your breasts and he has to pull away to get the shirt over your head and up your arms, where he bundles it over the coathook and now you're half naked in front of him, all lace and denim and the slow flush rising up your chest that's half embarrassment and half unadulterated lust.

"Will you stop psychoanalyzing me and just get over here?" you say.

"I like this new song you're singing," he taunts. "All this come-hither stuff." He stands in front of you and undoes the buttons of the dress shirt slowly, one at a time, like a strange striptease. You rattle your tied wrists against the hook fruitlessly. It would be easy to escape if you could step backwards, but you're bent at an odd angle because of the bench behind you and you can't find a way to get up onto it without slipping and wrenching your shoulders.

"You're still a pain in the ass," you tell him. "For all the stunts you pull, I should have fired you years ago. You're unprofessional and you're irritating and you have the worst case of egomania in the western hemisphere." And for someone pushing fifty, you're still looking pretty good, you think but don't say. You watch the muscles in his shoulders move as he takes off the shirt.

"I make up for it with my boyish charm," he says, hanging the shirt up carefully.

"You're thinking of Wilson," you tell him. He smirks at you.

"You're not dreaming about Jimmy right now, are you? When I'm here in front of you in all my glory?"

"Such as it is," you say, though he's always looked to you like a piece of art. Surrealist, sometimes, but worthy of praise and study.

He comes toward you and runs a possessive hand down over the curve of your hip and under your ass. "Didn't your mother teach you if you can't say something nice, it's best to put your mouth to other uses?"

"You never say anything nice," you snap, trying not to arch toward him, but your hips are tingling like magnets again and you want to hear the click as they touch his.

"I have better things to do with my lips," he says, and proves it by closing his mouth over your nipple, his tongue teasing you through the lace of the bra. You try very hard not to moan and end up making a sound kind of like bubbles. His chin and cheeks are prickly in all the right ways and if you could move much, you'd probably be rubbing yourself against him like a cat preening, but with your arms over your head and the bench-width gap between your legs and the wall, you can't get any leverage. He has you neatly pinned and it's clear that he's enjoying this. He nibbles at your breast with relish, using his teeth as he pleases, mostly gently but sometimes just enough pressure to sting and make you gasp. He is kneading your ass too, his fingers rolling over muscle you didn't know was tense but is only getting tenser in the best way as he moves his mouth to the other breast and continues in his apparent quest to sample every inch of flesh and lace.

"House," you start to say, not really knowing where you plan to go, but his name is always a good beginning.

"Hmmmmmm," he answers, and the buzz of his lips against the puckered skin of your breasts is amazing. You're goosebumps from toes to chin and your face is hot. The blood in your body seems to have no idea where it should be going and can't manage to prioritize: ass, brain, breasts, and so it settles for washing your cheeks with a high flush. You glance at the mirror by accident and it's startling and sexy to see yourself so turned on and House perusing your chest like a gourmand.

"Ooooh," you say, and he looks up at you and grins that wicked grin.

"Just discovered you like to watch? I'm glad I can bring these kind of revelations into your life, Lise."

You've decided you like it when he calls you that but you like it even more when he nuzzles at the underside of your breasts. He's pushed his hands down into your jeans now and though they're tighter than comfortable with his wrists in the waistband, you're more than willing to have him keep squeezing your ass all day. "House," you pant again.

"Really," he says, looking up. "You can call me Greg." But he kisses you before you can say anything, and you almost wish your hands were free so that you could pull him against you, because there's too much air between you and too much skin that you can't touch. He works one hand around to the front of your jeans as you nip his bottom lip, and just the brush of his fingers against you before he starts to unbutton your jeans is enough to make you jump, your whole body electric. Your fingers are tingling a little and you're worried about the blood flow, but not too worried, because his tongue is in your mouth doing something astounding and his fingers are dabbling along the dampness of your curls, rubbing here and there so that your hips jolt involuntarily.

"Grrrrrr," you try to say, and you think he laughs into your mouth. You want to keep kissing him but you can't take this any longer. You turn your face so that his mouth is scraping across your cheek and landing on your throat, where he sets to trying to give you what feels like the biggest hickey in history, and you can see yourself in the mirror again and it's hard to keep from moaning. The curve of his neck up from his shoulder as he sucks at the tender skin under your jaw is maybe the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.

"Pants off," you manage to say eventually, though his fingertips are tracing the patterns of the lace against the most sensitive bits of you.

"Yours or mine?" He rubs his chin over the tops of your breasts, then attempts to work your breast out of your bra using only his mouth.

"Yes!" you say, about an octave higher than you intend. "Both!"

He works you out of your jeans slowly, so slowly that you end up biting his earlobe in frustration, because he's creating a necklace of hickies that means you'll have to button your shirts up for a week. You are trembling and your arms are beginning to ache a little, but you're not sure if it's the way they're caught up above your head or with your need to hold him. His lips and teeth on your skin bring vague aches and the occasional pinch, and there are cool spots dappled over your neck and shoulder where his mouth has been, and you look to the mirror and see them already turning pink. He is possessive and he is controlling and you can't get enough of him.

"Plleeeeease," slides out of your mouth as he pushes denim down your thighs, leaving your mouth to kneel before you, his tongue warm and wet against the lace that is suddenly too much fabric. His knuckles roll along the back of your legs, too firm to tickle, and you think you could come just from that if it weren't for everything else. It's cold in the store, the ac up too high, but you feel like you've got the kind of sunburn you only remember from summer camp, so much heat in your skin that you're delirious. Your jeans are at your knees and you lift your feet out of them one at a time, careful not to knock his jaw, sliding your calf against his arm in a vain effort to touch more of him, and he is breathing into the crease of your thigh and you're almost at the edge and you haven't even gotten to the actual sex yet.

"Going to crease those," you pant, your voice rising and falling with the motion of his tongue. "Trousers off." He puts his cheekbone against the inside of your knee and drags his face slowly up and over your thigh and stomach back to your breasts, which he nuzzles as he unbuttons the pants and steps out of them. He moves away to shake them into their proper folds and hang them with the shirt, deliberate on purpose just to leave you needy on the other side of the room with four feet between you.

"How are the arms?" he asks, making the creases sharp and perfect, adjusting the drape of the fabric on the hanger.

"Tingly," you say.

"Not sure of the differential for tingly, but I have to say I like you this way, Lise. All dressed down and nowhere to go." His voice is low and it seems to vibrate in some deep part of you in a way you can't explain or describe.

"Greg," you say, just wanting to taste the whole word in your mouth before he renders you unable to string syllables together or put non-sibilant consonants on the ends of things again, and he turns around in his boxerbriefs and you think, God, he really is a piece of art. And he wants you, badly: you can see his cock twitch under the fabric as he looks you over, and there's a hungry glint in his eyes.

"I need you," you tell him, truthfully, but also to watch him react. His eyelids drop and his cock jumps, and you are going to go up in flames tethered to this stupid wall, a smear of ash in a dressing room. Then in one step he has crossed the space and for the first time you are pressed against the length of his body, his cock throbbing against your stomach as he cranes his neck to kiss you, and you are gasping at the heat of his skin as you push against him and get one heel on the bench. You brace your hips against his thighs as he leans into you and manage to get your hands unhooked. You drop your linked arms over his head, resting your elbows on his shoulders, and he chuckles.

"Clever," he mumbles, and presses you back into the wall. You hook the toes of the foot from the bench into the band of his boxerbriefs, tugging them down as best you can, and he moves against you helpfully, his thigh rubbing between yours and you're not sure what's the mirror and what isn't, because everything is bright and you see him everywhere. He reaches down and peels your panties off and you're glad you wore the lacy ones and you're sure he is too, and then he does a strange sort of twist to get all the way out of his boxerbriefs and his cock is hot and rigid against you and all you can think is how much you want him in you, no units of measure, just a vastness of need. Your best doctor, your oldest friend, the most difficult person in your life, fucking you in an upscale dressing room in front of a mirror and your hands are tied with silk and he's got this way of touching you with worship layered under all the desire and how did your life get here but it's just what you needed.

His fingers are grazing your clit now, moving through your curls, pressing into you as if he needs to check for your arousal, as if the room isn't starting to be perfumed with the smell of sex. He mutters against your lips and cups both hands under your ass, shifting the two of you sideways so that he can lift you a little way up the wall without your head banging the hooks, and you still have one leg hooked over his hip and you're on tiptoe. Pleasure washes through you at the friction of skin. Your breasts are crushed against his chest and you love it. He wraps his fist around his cock - you can't see it except in the mirror, but you can feel his hand between you - and nudges along the length of your folds, spreading the dampness, two fingers fishing inside you for a moment, stretching and curving to find your g-spot, and he rubs until your head lolls to the side and you can't help but moan, a shivery sound, and you see yourself in the mirror and it's astounding how utterly ecstatic you look and how sexy he is and then your eyes flutter shut and he's kissing you again as your muscles clench around his fingers.

You love him for this: he kisses you, seeing you through the moment, his fingers moving gently inside you as the ripples quiet. He is quivering against you, hot drops of fluid smearing over your thigh as his head bobs a little. You should probably have a condom, but you trust him to have tested himself, and you want a baby anyway, and he knows it. You open your mouth under his, and if you could free your hands you'd guide him inside yourself, but all you can do is whisper against his tongue how much you want him. He always was a quick study.

He pulls his fingers out with tender care, brushing them along your thigh before touching the tips to his mouth, and pushes into you so slowly you're not sure you won't scream. Either it's been so long since you had sex that you didn't remember how it felt or the two of you are made for each other, and at the moment you're laying odds on the latter because he feels better than anything.

"Lise," he says, and his voice is low and strained.

"It's fine," you gasp as he begins to move, carefully like it's painful for him, and you're hoping it's just imminent ejaculation that's worrying him and not his thigh, but he's balancing fine, better than you're doing on your toes, and you bless the years of high heels for your strong arches. He nods at your words and moves a little faster, his hips jerking like he just can't hold himself back. The force of his thrusts shakes you, and your head would be knocking the wall if your neck weren't rigid, your back arched with pleasure, your hips grinding into his, and the pain in your toes is half ecstacy too. His hand slips between you again, his damp fingers rubbing your clit, and he's getting more and more frantic. The tendons on his neck are standing out and you stretch to taste them and he gasps.

"Come on," you goad him, holding him close with your calf. "Grrrrrrrrreg." His name takes years to drag out of you and those years are spent not really being able to breathe because the air has gotten thin and so hot that everything's cold and you can still feel the friction of him against you but it's incidental to the euphoria the two of you have created, because at this high point, it is just you and House and the sum of all the minutes you've spent together. Your hands are fists because you can't dig your nails into his back the way you want to. He is murmuring into your hair and you suspect he's saying your name but there are some unfamiliar sounds as well and you're not sure what language he's speaking. You hold him as close as you can with the pressure of your leg and your bound arms and the two of you come down together. You can feel your heartbeats thudding in synch. In the mirror, you both look limp, completely satiated.

After a moment he lets a long shuddery breath into your hair and eases out of you, making sure you don't fall over as your hips slide down the wall. Your knees won't hold, so he settles you on the bench, sitting beside you, pushing aside the pile of fabrics into the corner of the room. His deft fingers undo the knots of the tie. It is indelibly crumpled and you want to laugh. He loops it around his neck. You lean against him, just breathing in and out, and then you lean over to pick up your panties. Your fingers tremble as you pull them on and your thighs are slick with his wetness and yours.

"Let's go home and take a shower," he says, his cheek canted on top of your head. "I trust your fashion sense. This tie will definitely go with everything. I can't wait to see you blush every time I walk down the hall in it."

"Anything to get you to wear something professional," you murmur, but you're blushing again already.

"Maybe I'll give it to Wilson," he muses, and you glare at him in the mirror, and he smirks back at you.

"You will not," you order him. "Some things are personal. No one else is allowed to wear it."

"Are you saying you'd be willing to wear it again?" His eyes are bright.

"Maybe if you're nice," you say. "Shower. Yours or mine?"

"I have a bathtub big enough for two," he says. "And some ancient bubblebath, I think. I'll let you wash my hair and everything."

"When you put it like that, who could refuse?" you tease. He kisses the top of your head and gets up, slow and shaky, pulling his boxerbriefs on over his flaccid cock, but you're cheered by the thought that he'll probably let you strip him down again later. You adjust your bra and both of you find your clothes, moving a little stiffly, and no one in the department store will look at you as you pay and leave with the large bags, but that's all right. On the way to his place, you roll the windows down and turn the radio up because life is good.


End file.
